Honey, the Power Went Out

Two days into our trip and there is so much to tell you about.

Day One and We Have No Power?!?

Traveling by RV is a lot like your typical road trip except you effectively bring a house with you. This gives you many advantages — a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, a clothes closet, snacks (yeah!), TV, etc. It does, however, bring disadvantages. Namely, there is a lot that can go wrong. There are many systems in an RV, like water, sewer, HVAC, appliances, and, today’s problem child — an electrical system.

An RV electrical system is rather complex. It’s been a long time since I took a physics class, so figuring it all out is a bit of a challenge for me. There is the usual automobile electrical system that starts the van and runs all things related to driving. Then there is what are called the house system that runs, well, the house.

Stay with me here. The house system has lithium batteries that power the lights, TVs, electrical sockets, water pump, etc. The batteries are charged in one of four ways — plug the RV into an electrical outlet, run the engine and the alternator charges them, run the onboard propane generator, and/or there are solar panels on the roof that charge them.

Well, I woke up after our first night on the road (I always wake up before Lisa) to find our power had gone out overnight. We had exhausted our batteries somehow. OK, this is bad as we are on a three week trip and power is pretty important. We are staying at some places that have plug-in power, but, on many of our stops we are boondocking— that is we are camping with no available hookups and are completely self contained. While we can recharge the batteries, if they run out after only a few hours we will not be in good shape on this trip.

Figuring out why, that’s the hard part. Not panicking, well, that’s even harder. Fortunately, Lisa and I are not prone to panic. But, it sure was tempting. Lisa, the grown-up in the relationship, said, “We are not going to let this cause us any stress.” And, she’s right. We generally look at these situations from a “What’s the worst thing that can happen” perspective. And, really, the worst that could happen was that our food in the refrigerator and freezer would spoil. While that would be a shame, there are a lot of grocery stores along the way.

So, now we have a puzzle to solve. That makes it like our morning Wordle or NYT Crossword. Much more fun than panicking, don’t you agree?

OK, I’ve droned on too long here. After much thought, observation, and exploration, we determined that our freezer is, for some, reason, a power sucker. You know the type — they walk into a room of happy people and suck all the life out of everyone. That’s our freezer. I turned it off and voila, the system started behaving normally. The batteries were happy, the rest of the electrical appliances worked normally and we woke this morning to a fully functioning system.

Whew. My fear of having to eat Tim Horton’s donuts every day for three weeks has been averted.

More Wine Tasting

When in wine country, one must taste wine. And, when in wine country in an RV, one must stay overnight at a winery. So, as we landed in the Willamette Valley, the Napa of Oregon, we stayed overnight at Laurel Ridge Winery in Carlton.

Laurel Ridge is a beautiful property with rows of vines and an orchard of hazelnut trees. We parked the Winona Rider among these trees, heading to the tasting room and drank some beautiful Pinot Noir wines.

Climate Change, It’s Getting Real

As we drove up Highway Five through Northern California and Southern Oregon, the obvious effects of climate change hit us hard.

Our good friend Mark Reckers grew up on a rice farm in Northern California. He told us that, because of the multi-year drought, rice farmers in his hometown were allocated no water for their crops. This means no crops. We drove past those rice fields on our way north. And, there they were, completely barren. Sad for the farmers and bad for the price of rice.

We then drove past Shasta Lake, a major reservoir and large source of water for Californians. The water level was so obviously low, we wondered if it will go completely dry.

And, finally, as we approached the Oregon border , we saw miles of burned up forest from the fires that happened over the past several years.

It isn’t that there is less water. Climate change is just causing it to be redistributed. As we were driving we heard word of Yellowstone getting closed down due to flooding and the resultant rockslides. I guess we know where the water went.

Climate change has been one of those theoretical, it’s in the future type of problem for decades. Well, it’s here. Time to deal with it.